'Biodiversity, Sustainability and Cornell' is the topic for Missouri Botanical Garden Director Peter H. Raven in the 2004 Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture.
"Labor and Election-Year Politics" is the title and theme of this year's Union Days at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), April 13-16. Most events are free and open to the public. "The annual Union Days program is designed to raise awareness among students and others about the struggles of working people to better their lives and their communities," said Jefferson Cowie, assistant professor of collective bargaining, labor law and labor history at the ILR School and the event's organizer. "This year the focus will be on the central role that labor plays in electoral politics, making the week's events of interest to anyone concerned with justice in the workplace or the fate of the 2004 presidential elections." (April 8, 2004)
As pump prices for gasoline set record highs in the United States and crude oil becomes more expensive than it has been almost at any time since the 1991 Gulf War, Cornell University is hosting an engineering conference April 15-17 on Energy Demand and Sustainable Development. The conference will feature talks on the applications and business potential of new technologies in energy and sustainable development by Cornell alumni who are leading energy industry figures and faculty members who are leading the research at the Cornell campus. They will discuss a range of issues involved in formulating national energy policy, including the role of advanced technologies, providing low-cost electricity and the use of ethanol as a fuel. The conference also includes a research poster session by students. (April 8, 2004)
Lauren Jacobs, a junior psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, is one of 77 students selected from a national pool of 609 candidates to win a prestigious Truman Scholarship.
Top business leaders will convene for a summit on the transformation of business at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management Wednesday, April 14, and Thursday, April 15. The summit marks the 20th anniversary of the $20 million endowment gift to the school from university alumni Samuel C. Johnson '50, Imogene Powers Johnson '52 and the Johnson family. The school, which was founded in 1946, added "Samuel Curtis Johnson" to its name in 1984 to recognize the extraordinary generosity of the Johnson family. Sam Johnson is now chairman emeritus of the Johnson Family of Companies, familiarly known as Johnson Wax. The school's name honors Johnson's great-grandfather, namesake and the founder of the company. (April 8, 2004)
Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman of the board and CEO of General Electric Co., the world's most profitable industrial company, will give the 2004 Hatfield address, April 15 at 4:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall on the Cornell University campus. There will be overflow seating, and closed-circuit television viewing of the talk, in PepsiCo Auditorium, 305 Ives Hall. The talk is free and open to the public. (April 8, 2004)
Bruce Winstein, the Samuel K. Allison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, will discuss anti-matter and radiation left over from the big bang when he delivers three Hans A. Bethe lectures at Cornell University April 12, 14 and 19. All three talks will be in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall on campus and will be open to the public without charge. (April 8, 2004)
Psychologist William E. Cross Jr. of the City University of New York's Graduate Center, a former associate professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, will give the Cornell College of Human Ecology's annual Flemmie Kittrell lecture Monday, April 12, at 4 p.m. in G73 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall (MVR) on the Cornell campus. The lecture is free and open to the public. Cross, whose work focuses on the study of African-American identity, will speak on the topic "Theory and Research on Black Identity Before and After the 1954 Brown Decision on School Desegregation." (April 7, 2004)
Disease is increasing among most kinds of marine organisms, according to a long-term study by Jessica Ward of Cornell University and Kevin Lafferty of the U.S. Geological Survey. The study, conducted at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif., found that fish are no exception to the troubling trend, despite fewer reports of fish disease over the years. An analysis by Ward and Lafferty of hundreds of previous studies of marine-ecosystem disease is published this month in the journal Public Library of Science Biology . The report finds the rate of disease increasing in some taxa, such as in turtles, mammals, mollusks and urchins, but declining in fish.
The heart of mankind's best friend, the dog, holds secrets that could improve the health of humans, according to researchers who hope to produce the first computer model of catastrophic rhythm disturbances in the heart, known as ventricular fibrillation. The condition can result in sudden cardiac failure. Cornell University, Gene Network Sciences Inc. (GNS) and the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) have been selected by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to receive a $2 million, four-year bioengineering research grant. The award will be used to develop a 3-D computer model of the canine heart. (April 6, 2004)
A new Cornell University study found that while hotel managers and staff provided extraordinary personal service during the massive blackout of August 2003, many properties experienced significant operating failures after the lights went out -- and are not well- prepared for a future blackout. The study, by Robert Kwortnik, an assistant professor at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, looked at 93 hotels, from economy to luxury properties, that lost power when the outage struck the northeastern United States and Canada last summer. The affected hotels were without electricity for 16 hours on average and for as long as two days in some instances. One-quarter of the hoteliers surveyed had standby power to operate wide sections of their hotels, but those auxiliary systems failed for some properties. In many hotels, backup power to critical emergency systems failed after several hours. (April 05, 2004)
Cornell University Police is joining the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other traffic safety partners across the country to celebrate the launch of World Health Day 2004, April 7, with a new traffic and pedestrian safety initiative. The CDC's public health theme for this year's World Health Day observance is "Family Road Safety: Protect the Ones You Love." Each year, WHO recognizes a World Health Day to address a critical global public health issue. This year marks the first time that worldwide road safety and accident prevention efforts will be highlighted. In an effort to increase awareness of road safety issues on the Cornell campus and to improve road safety at the university, Cornell Police will institute its new "Courtesy Promotes Traffic Safety" program beginning April 7. "It is our firm belief that courtesy helps create an environment in which motor vehicle crashes are less likely to happen," said Cornell Police Sgt. Chuck Howard. (April 5, 2004)
